Toughen Up Princess by Sioban Timmer; illustrated by Alison Mutton

From Goodreads
The book comprises poems retelling classic fairytales from a new perspective, with a distinctly Australian theme. It’s aimed at 8-12 year olds, and so Sioban decided that she wanted the inside illustrations to be in black and white, so that it didn’t look like a picture book for younger audiences.

Review
This book is an absolute pleasure to read. It’s humorous, well written and the rhyming poetry is extremely well done. The words used are backed up by equally brilliant artwork by a very talented artist Alison Mutton. It only took me about 10 minutes to read but I felt I wanted to revisit the book again and again. I loved Sioban’s take on familiar fairy tales and the Australian spin that she did on them. I would hope that any children reading this book would develop a desire to either re-read the original fairy tales that these poems take their inspiration from or to read them for the first time.

Whilst it appears to be aimed at children, this book will also appeal to adults too who may even enjoy being able to go back down memory lane to a time when they may have also read the stories the poems were based on.

Thank you Sioban for sharing your gift and talent with us. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.